CNN reports that some kids in a small town in Oregon went on a field trip to see the new movie, The Hobbit (wow, that counts as a field trip – send me to Oregon!), and what falls to the floor as they pull down their seats? A loaded handgun, safety off.

The kids were smart enough not to touch it, and called a teacher who then called the police.

But this is the part of the story that gets me. From KPTV:

On Wednesday night, Tillamook police said a 61-year-old man went into the theater to ask if someone had found his gun.

Officers contacted the man and learned he realized his gun was lost Tuesday night at the theater so he tried calling the business. He said there was no answer, so he tried again Wednesday.

After being unable to reach any employees by phone, he drove back to the theater to see if his gun had been placed in lost-and-found.

Police did not identify the man, but officers said he has a Tillamook County concealed handgun license and his information will be provided to the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Office. A report will then be sent to the district attorney’s office for review….

The gun’s owner told police he never thought to call law enforcement officers to report the gun as lost.

Huh. This is the poster boy for concealed carry advocates. A man carries around a loaded gun, safety off, then loses it in a public place frequented by children (it’s “The Hobbit,” of all movies), and doesn’t “think” to call the police.

The NRA likes to pretend that we live in a perfect world, where all we need is current law enforced and more gun safety training. But it doesn’t work that way. We live in an imperfect world full of people, some of whom are stupid, and others just hateful. Not everyone is going to “get” the whole “safety training” thing. As this man proves. He had a loaded gun on him, safety off – who does that? I had BB guns (air rifles, to be exact) when I was a kid (still do, somewhere) and I knew to always have the safety on when walking around with it. And the one or two times I’ve used a gun – skeet shooting, pheasant hunting, and then target practice – again, I knew that the safety is always on unless you’re firing the thing.

People are imperfect. They’re going to mess up and break the rules. And when we’re talking about deadly weapons, we need to accept the fact that no amount of training, or restrictions, are going to make guns safe enough. The only way to make guns safe enough, is to get rid of them all together.

John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in Washington, DC. John's article archive.